Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon at Sibos with Eddie Robb, Zumo

Joining us at the FF Salon for Sibos 2022, we caught up with Eddie Robb, the Commercial Director at Zumo Enterprise, to discuss the entrepreneurial spirit and the importance of enforcing sustainability in the cryptosphere and taking active steps to reduce the energy to power them. 
Brought up in the small town of Banchory, Aberdeenshire in Scotland, the need to create and solve problems has always been with Robb, whether it be as the Head of Commercial Development at Scotland’s biggest independent rugby blog (The Offside Line) or a snowboard instructor at the Okemo Mountain Resort. This self-sufficient drive has led Robb to work at the forefront of crypto innovation with Zumo. 
“We’ve taken the challenge head-on,” he explains. “There is a high energy burn use there, but at Zumo, we’ve put investment into how to solve that problem and try to understand it more. We have a Chief Sustainability Officer who is digging into that, and we have written two reports, working out the energy usage, and our plan as to how we’re going to take that on.” 
For Robb, exacting ESG in crypto comes from sustained effort, building the strategy in-house and building your teams and operations around it. 
 

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon at Sibos with Paul Thomalla, Finastra

When we talk about fintech innovation, we often focus on the supersized. Real-time, cross-border, million-dollar deals - all tremendous leaps of achievement in the industry - but they distract from the human aspect of the business, connecting people when they need the most support. 
“Everybody does payments, whether they know it or not,” says Paul Thomalla. “You have a cross-section of the entirety of the world who all touch the business you do.” 
Joining us in the FF Salon at Sibos 2022, we sat down with Thomalla, the Head of Industry and Regulatory Affairs, at Finastra to talk about the very personal core of payments and meeting customers in the middle with their preferences is invaluable today. 
“Cash is king to some people, but it is also someone else’s money mule, its another person’s fraud motif, its another terrorism methodology or abuse of society,” said Thomalla. “(Cash) has many bad practices and is very expensive to run. 
For Thomalla, cash is no longer the determiner for money movement in the world, as it is rapidly being eclipsed by alternative methods like digital wallets and mobile money - which can serve a much wider scope of customers who previously wouldn’t have access to financial services.

FF Virtual Arena: The BaaS Barometer

Banking-as-a-Service has taken the world by storm. The global market is poised to grow to $12.2 billion by the end of 2031, and the industry has seen a wealth of startups that offer pure BaaS solutions to fintechs and incumbents, from solarisBank to the 11:FS Foundry. Many have tried to define what makes this cutting-edge service unique, and the answer lies in who it benefits. 
In this Virtual Arena, we welcome some of the experts who operate in the very heart of BaaS and discuss the role it plays in the modern banking world. Our guests include; Amit Dua, the President of SunTec Business Solutions, Aruna Bhalla, the Head of Partnerships & Open Banking at TSB Bank, and Paul Harrald, the Group CIO at Curve. Together, we look at the difficult questions around BaaS, from its competition with banks to its stickiness with banking customers. 
“It’s a business model, enabled by technology,” said Dua. “Why has it enabled hype? Well because the customers have gotten used to a frictionless and holistic customer experience, thanks to Amazon and Google. And they are increasingly expecting a similar experience delivered in any journey they take.”. 
The customer has become retail savvy, utilising payments in their everyday lives in an open and immediate manner – the autonomy they now have over their financials has consequently been extended to their preferences in banking. 
“67% of consumers now want a superapp to consolidate all their digital activities. That’s huge, that’s them recognising that they need access to an app that does everything,” explains Bhalla. “It is absolutely on the banks to make sure they are attracting the partners to work with them. TSB has spent the last couple of years setting up the foundations so partners can partner with us.” 
The advent of BaaS is not meant to scare banks of stakes in the services they provide. Through collaboration, the service can work as an advantage to incumbents as it can open up their distribution channels and connect their products directly to customers without the need to directly interact with them – it is a win-win situation.

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon at Sibos with Shilpa Bangera, Finastra

oining us at the FF Salon for Sibos 2022, we sat down with the Chief Revenue Officer at Finastra, Shilpa Bangera, to discuss fintechs role in economic inclusion and championing access to finance around the world. Growing up in India, a nation which has rapidly ascended to one of fintech's most technologically advanced innovation hubs, Bangera understands the power that this industry has in bringing about real social diversity and change. 
 
“It is all about financial inclusion,” she explains. “If you look at the past, that was only available to a certain subset of folks, large enterprises who had the be-alls and end-alls of their disposition. That is not the case right now.” 
 
In an almost radical move, fintechs like Finastra are facilitating the work of SMEs and small-time lenders and up-and-coming entrepreneurs so that access to capital is available to all. It is the collaboration between every player working in the sector that is the real driving force for innovation. To nurture talent in fintech, big players in the industry need to invest and support the work happening on the outskirts by new startups and underdogs.
“We believe that 99% of innovation is going to come from the outside, and we tap into that intellectual capacity and capability through the Hackathons. And these Hackathons give us a preview not only of the sheer talent that is out there but what value the talent brings to us and our customers.” 
For Finastra, there is absolutely more strength in number. 

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon Pilot with Monika Liikamaa

“Without decent mobile networks, there are no mobile payments. 
 
Monika Liikamaa, the Co-Founder and CEO of Enfuce, has seen the recent buzz around mobile payments and TELECO, and she is not impressed. Nokia started offering mobile money services in 2004, we’ve had that functionality for almost two decades now. 
 
Liikamaa joins us in the FF Salon to talk about global payments scalability and the role cloud technology plays in facilitating that scope. With a storied career in the banking sector and witnessing the fall out of the dotcom boom, the entrepreneur so the strategies companies like AWS adopted and why they were essential to constructing the global payment and card issuing culture we have today. 
 
“We can’t do it alone,” Liikamaa said. “If you think about the life cycle of a payment, there are many people that need to get paid [...] that chain needs to be unbroken, secure and real-time.” 
 
Such are the key factors to making modern payments actionable. Transparency in payments and where payments are going is a growing conversation in fintech and a solution to giving consumers better control over their finances and the way they live their lives. 
 
Consumer autonomy is essential for issues like climate change, as payments are not free from setting off emissions. “Companies and people need to be thinking about how they can make business in a way that does more good than harm,” Liikamaa explains.

The Paytech Show 6.02: Automating Real Time Payments with AutoRek & ACI Worldwide

The mechanics of moving money requires a team of players: merchants, banks, software providers, and regulators, all have a unique and crucial role in getting funds from point A to B. To exercise high-volume transactions in real-time, guaranteed reconciliation can determine whether a small business can keep its lights on or close shop. 
In this episode of the Paytech Show, we explore the process of payments reconciliation and why automation is the most reliant tool when ensuring million-dollar transactions are paid in full and on time. Joining us in conversation we have Hugh Burden, the Head of Sales at reconciliation software provider, AutoRek, and Somya Patnaik, the Principal Product Manager at ACI Worldwide. Both explain the challenges financial services providers face when it comes to cross-border and real-time payments and how they can keep up with the rapid introduction of new digital payment avenues. 
“There is a need for automated reconciliation platforms that will solve not only the volume-related complexities but other operational inefficiencies that banks are facing today,” said Patnaik. “The payment systems, the payment infrastructure, and the payment solutions need to be scalable and agile enough to support the volume explosion that is coming up.” 
Payment volumes are only going to get bigger, and financial institutions cannot rely on outdated and manual systems to act at the rate which is expected by modern consumers. 
“Most payment companies are technology companies,” explains Burden. “They have spent a huge amount of money on that customer acquisition piece, and that’s sometimes been at the expense of the back and middle office. We still find large financial companies who are reliant on excel or a self-built platform.” Such reliance only provides more difficulties for institutions to deal with, diverting time and money which could be spent elsewhere. 
When processing cross-border payments, companies are confronted with additional pain points distinctive from domestic. Foreign exchange rates, regulations, and dealing with interfaces from other jurisdictions, all exacerbate the core systems of incumbents. This, paired with the growing digital presence in online customer interaction, indicate that fundamental changes in core banking systems are necessary to facilitate and reconcile this next generation of payment types. 
For Patnaik, the future is promising. The introduction of ISO 20022 and Faster Payments will encourage financial institutions to digitalise and integrate automation more succinctly into their systems. 
“The next few years are going to be implementing those strategies, transforming technologies, driving innovation, and basically as an ecosystem, we will be reaping the benefits,” she said. “Efficiency in reconciliation is a challenge, and that will continue to grow with higher volumes. But we are seeing central schemes take more control over regulatory requirements.” 

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon Pilot with Raf De Kimpe

The financial services industry can sometimes feel vast and intimidating. Conferences and gatherings of the community are essential because they give the sector time to reflect and talk to other members of their group. This is a notion Raf De Kimpe, the CEO of Fintech Week London is all too familiar with. 
 
De Kimpe, also the CCO of The Fintech Times, took the time before his interview with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to join us at the FF Salon and discuss the purpose of his momentous event and what it provides to the players in the fintech industry. 
 
Across the two-day conference, the event sought to challenge the idea of “the coming of age of fintech,” with speakers and partners reflecting on what they have achieved, and what they can do better. For De Kimpe, who has been leading the event since 2021, the big aims for the future are to try new things and keep the priorities of Fintech Week London aligned with people in fintech. 
 
“Fintechs that are diverse and inclusive and have a societal value, those are my favourite ones,”  said De Kimpe. “If you look at what fintech can do for people, I try to make sure that we work with those that make extra value in people's lives by helping them move forward.”

Monika Liikamaa knows that Greenwashing in the Industry is BS

“Greenwashing is panicking.”
The financial services industry is no stranger to climate change, being one of the main beneficiaries of fossil fuels and excessive energy consumption. At the FF Salon, we talk to Monika Liikamaa, the Co-Founder and CEO of payment company Enfuce, about the limitations of greenwashing efforts and why transparency at every stage of operations is the first issue to tackle in fintech.

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon Pilot with Olivia Minnock

Fintech Finance Podcasts: The FF Salon Pilot with Terrie Smith